Warrior USA:
Bribing the Military-Industrial Complex
Bill Astore / Bracing News

(April 3, 2026) — This might be the most hilarious self-own ever:

“Imagine an Iran that, instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars, supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping the people of Iran,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “You’d have a much different country.”

Yes, indeed, we’d have a much different America if the government wasn’t spending trillions of dollars buying weapons, supporting terrorists, and waging wars, but that’s not what corporate elites and wannabe warlords want.

This brings me to the announcement that child care in America can’t be funded but wars and militarism must be funded to the tune of $1.5 trillion in the next fiscal year. As Trump put it at a White House luncheon, it’s “not possible” for the government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care programs: “We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars.” That’s rather rich, coming from the self-styled Peace President.

With respect to the mushrooming Pentagon budget, the British Guardian has the story:

Defense spending would surge to its highest level in decades under a budget proposal put forward by the Trump administration on Friday, while other government programs would face cuts totaling 10%.

The document prepared by the White House office of management and budget (OMB) is a starting point for negotiations that will probably occupy Congress’s appropriators in the coming months, and is unlikely to be enacted in full.

But it nonetheless serves as a signal of Donald Trump’s priorities, with the US military embroiled in a conflict with Iran that has spread across the Middle East, as his Republican allies look to defend majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Under the proposal for the 2027 fiscal year beginning on 1 October, defense spending would rise by 42% to $1.5tn, $445bn higher than its level in 2026. The funds would go towards programs intended to ensure “the United States maintains the world’s most powerful and capable military”, including expanding the defense manufacturing industrial base and funding the Golden Dome, a proposed space-based weapons system to intercept strikes against the United States.

However, the document does not mention money for the war with Iran, which congressional Republicans are expected to fund using budget reconciliation legislation that can pass without Democratic votes.

The document proposes slashing non-defense spending by 10%, or $73bn, through “reducing or eliminating woke, weaponized, and wasteful programs”, and also transferring responsibility for some services to state and local governments.

A proven way to keep the U.S. military on your side is to give it all the money it could ever possibly want, and more. Bribery, in a word. Whatever else is true here, the military-industrial complex, flush with cash, will continue to support Trump no matter how stupid, immoral, and illegal his wars are.

Welcome to Warrior USA.